"Initially, Emeneau was very confident of the Dravidian origin of the non-Sanskrit substratum in Vedic languages. However, later he publicly acknowledged that the Dravidian origins which he and Barrow had ascribed to most of the Rig Vedic substratum words were, in reality, largely conjectures and not empirical facts. In 1980, he stated that the words loaned from Dravidian into Indo-Aryan are 'in fact all merely suggestions'; 'all etymologies are in the last analysis unprovable'; and that such theories are 'acts of faith'. Emeneau conceded, 'It is clear that not all of Burrow's suggested borrowing from Dravidian will stand the test of his own principles.'"